Field of Art
The present invention relates generally to the field of complex online transactions, and in particular to an integrated portfolio-driven decision-support and transactional system that facilitates each user's creation and management of a cohesive benefits portfolio.
Description of Related Art
With the advent of the Affordable Care Act, the attention focused on healthcare, and in particular on the selection of medical plans, has increased exponentially. “Plan Chooser” websites have become commonplace, enabling individuals and families, including employees, to select the most “suitable” medical plan based on various characteristics, including financial costs (e.g., premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums) as well as predicted usage of medical resources (e.g., prescription drugs, doctor visits, surgeries and other procedures).
But the selection of a medical plan, though significant, is but one of the many choices faced by individuals and families regarding available health, insurance, financial and related benefits. For example, even after selecting a medical plan, to what extent, if any, should a family also select an “accident” or “short-term disability” plan? What about life insurance, 401K plans and the like?
Today these decisions are made on an individual basis, as if all of these benefits were unrelated to one another. But, the problem is that these various benefits are often interrelated. For example, even the most desirable medical plan may leave a “medical gap” (e.g., due to a relatively high deductible) that could be filled by an appropriately sized “accident” policy. Moreover, a family's level of income might leave an “income gap” that could be filled by a “short-term disability” policy, depending upon various demographic and other factors. And families have a finite number of “premium dollars” that are available for the acquisition of these benefits, depending of course upon their level of risk aversion.
While existing decision-making systems facilitate the selection of different policy offerings within an individual “product” or benefit type (e.g., short-term disability), such systems fail to account for these “gaps” in coverage resulting from the inter-dependencies among different products and individual benefit plans, particularly as applied on a personalized basis to a particular user's family. What is needed is a system that takes a “portfolio view” of the benefits landscape in an effort to facilitate the decision-making process while taking into account these various inter-dependencies.